Fanny Cradock - Stage and Screen Adaptations

Stage and Screen Adaptations

In her early years on television Fanny Cradock's husky voice and larger-than-life personality lent themselves to mimicry, for example on two BBC Radio comedy shows in the 1960s, Beyond Our Ken and Round the Horne, in which Betty Marsden played Fanny Haddock. Fanny and Johnnie were also parodied by The Two Ronnies and on Benny Hill, with Benny as Fanny and Bob Todd as an invariably drunk Johnnie.

Cradock's life has also been the subject of two biopic dramas: Doughnuts like Fanny's by Julia Darling and Fear of Fanny by Brian Fillis. Fear of Fanny was originally a stage play. After a successful run by the Leeds Library Theatre Company, touring the United Kingdom in October and November 2003, the play was turned into a television drama starring Mark Gatiss and Julia Davis, broadcast in October 2006 on BBC Four as one of a series of culinary-themed dramas. It was filmed in high definition and was also broadcast on BBC HD.